Dear courageous (Eruri, Erwin x Levi) EXPLICIT

Part One: The Dream Serpent

Author's Note: As a gay individual myself, I can't wait to welcome you all into this story. While my assignment of Erwin's initial str8 partner will likely make you grimace, I promise that it's purposeful. Dive in and ache your chest with us ♥️

**************

The winds of Paradis were changing. Shifting westward, they hardened their edges cool towards autumn. Lately there was an itch under Erwin's skin he couldn't shake, a creeping he couldn't follow. More than longing, it snaked deeper than his senses, aching the space behind his ribs hollow and dissatisfied. He had tried to feed the feeling full, drown it with whiskey, even bury it in sex; nothing helped. Laying sweating and naked in the dark while his partner Petra sighed and crooned in afterglow, he was still aroused, still empty.

"Baby... Erwin... Do you feel good?"

Erwin hated how he could never seem to answer in time.

"... Of course."

Frustrated to the point of bad temper, he had resorted to walking. He walked at night while Petra slept in his chambers–though they were more shared than strictly his anymore– wandering in laps around the compound or escaping the gates to imprint the grid of the town. Down the empty streets the shadows hovered like slicks of oil over the cobbles, vanishing just as he drew near enough to catch them. He was exhausted; tired of snapping at Jean's minor errors in the field, at Hange's digressions during briefings, at every simple lapse he'd previously entertained with grace and good humour. He was snagging. Turning sharp at the edges. Mean with drought. He only wanted to feel at ease again. 

Up on Wall Rose this evening, the wind met him like a shove, howling cold against the broad of his chest. He pushed forward, leaned in, pretending like he was finally getting somewhere. Spotting someone standing near the outpost not far ahead, he quickly recognized his Captain and quickened his pace. Levi's cloak rippled green over the gust, the usual tidy of his black hair straying across his forehead abandoned as wild grass as he looked beyond the wall.

Erwin opened his mouth. "Lev—"

His voice stuck in his throat as suddenly his cheeks prickled, warming unbidden. Something about Levi  had snagged at him tonight, wrapping his breath up tight as a fist. The easy confidence of the Captain's slender body, the sureness of his gaze felt like a slap as Erwin watched him, resentment sharp as wild thistles thorning between his ribs. He blushed harder, ashamed. He'd looked at his Captain countless times before and never been envious; if anything, Levi's jaggedness and chronic melancholy reinforced his own suitedness to leadership.

Still, whatever it was he was seeing in Levi now, he was certain he'd never seen before tonight. Even the air around him seemed poised and sure, and that, that Erwin wanted.

The hollow behind his ribs murmured a low drum.

"Erwin."

"Hm?" Erwin blinked as Levi was suddenly before him, lean arms folded across his chest.

"You were staring."

With a clear of his throat, Erwin adjusted himself taller. "Was I?" he said, pulling his gaze away. "I was thinking of something else." Beyond the wall, the conifers juddered their branches in a secret code over the wind.

Levi tipped his face. "Not like you to lose your bearings. Was there something you wanted to say?"

"If I did then I would have said it."

Erwin watched as the whites sprang up around Levi's eyes. Then, lifting a long, black eyebrow, the Captain looked at Erwin in a way he instantly despised; a creeping, itching look that found out the tremor in his lips, his throat, his chest drumming louder.